Mumbai: The Mahayuti govt will present its first budget on March 10. The budget session of the state legislature will be held in Mumbai from March 3 to March 26.
The advisory committee of the legislative assembly and council met at Vidhan Bhavan on Sunday to chart out the business of the legislature for the budget session. The meeting was attended by Legislative Council chairman Ram Shinde, assembly speaker Rahul Narvekar, CM Devendra Fadnavis, Dy CMs Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar.The latter is also the finance minister. Others present included parliamentary affairs minister Chandrakant Patil, MLAs Chhagan Bhujbal (NCP), Jitendra Awhad (NCP-SP), Dr Nitin Raut (Cong), Girish Mahajan, Shambhuraje Desai, Anil Parab, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Prasad Lad, Praveen Darekar, Shrikant Bharatiya, Randhir Savarkar, and Hemant Patil.
Congress legislative party leader Vijay Wadettiwar was absent as he was travelling. Sources said the meeting was to be held on a weekday but was later postponed to Sunday.
A discussion on women’s issues will be held on March 6, while two days will be dedicated to a discussion on the Constitution on its 75th anniversary. This will be held towards the end of the session.
While the populist Ladki Bahin scheme is draining the govt’s coffers, no new populist schemes are likely to be announced. The Opposition, which is highly diminished in numbers, is unlikely to be very aggressive during this session. So far, the speaker has not acceded to the opposition’s demand to give them the opposition leader’s post, given none of the opposition parties have managed to win 29 assembly constituencies—the bare minimum for the opposition’s post.
